Hello Google Porn

Porn transmitted onHello.com, a Web site owned and operated by Google, helped catch an alleged predator in South Carolina. This isn't another mix-up about googleporn.com, one of more than 9,000 domains owned by Google, Inc.

Police nabbed the alleged child pornographer who sent more than 500 pornographic images and porn videos to a cop posing as a 13 year old boy.

Hello.com, a Google-Picasa social site that allows instant upload and transmission of pictures and video was the platform used by the suspect, high school teacher Timothy Lynn Brumit, 47, of Aiken, S.C. Amanda Stewart of Potomac News first reported the Google porn story on Saturday.

In 2005, police in Brazil arrested a gang of drug dealers who were using Google's Orkut social networking site to sell ecstasy and marijuana. Later the following year, Brazilian prosecutors threatened to shut down Orkut unless Google cooperated with police investigating child porn on the social search site.

Orkut allegedly published content promoting crime and child pornography. Federal prosecutors asked a judge to order Google in Brazil to disclose users' information or be closed down. The Brazilian prosecutors also asked Google to pay $61m (£32.2m) in fines for damages.

Prosecutors have been frustrated by Google's refusal to release identifying information so Brazilian authorities can pursue them for prosecution.
"In some cases Google has not even preserved the evidence we need to file charges against the pedophiles that use the Internet to spread their ideas," prosecutor Sergio Gardenghi Suiama said last year.

Microsoft and Yahoo have provided user information in similar cases, noted Suiama in a press conference last summer.

"We are reviewing the documentation we received today from prosecutors in Sao Paulo and will respond to their requests," Google said in a statement last August. "Google is committed to removing child pornography from Orkut and has been working with the authorities in several states in Brazil ... to deal with this problem through valid legal process."

About the author

Kevin Heisler, formerly the executive editor of Search Engine Watch, is a search and advertising industry veteran. His former roles include VP, strategic accounts for integrated digital marketing firm 360i; director of business development for Didit Search Marketing; and search industry analyst at Jupiter Research.

The U.K. Supreme Court has granted permission in part for Google to appeal against a ruling relating to a dispute over the user information through cookies via use of the Apple Safari browser.
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